Dell PowerVault MD3000: First external RAID SAS array for DAS. The MD3000's maximum capacity is 4.5TB; the ability to expand the system with two MD1000 arrays for a total of 13.5TB will be added during the first half of this year. As many as four Dell PowerEdge servers can be attached to each system. Active-active RAID controllers can produce throughputs up to 1,400MB/sec and approximately 90,000 IOPS from cache. The PowerVault MD3000 is available now, with prices starting around $6,499.

McData UltraNet Edge Storage Router and USDX platforms: First FICON-based tape storage platforms to support read and write acceleration for open systems and mainframe tape systems over a WAN. McData announced in November that it had added FICON read-acceleration to its existing write-acceleration capability. The firm claims to be the first to offer this combined pipelining functionality for both heterogeneous and mainframe tape environments.